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by valeriange



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, M/M, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-30
Updated: 2019-09-30
Packaged: 2020-11-16 14:00:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20833418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valeriange/pseuds/valeriange
Summary: Drift finds out some things on the Lost Light have changed since he left.





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Ratchet found Drift sitting at the edge of their tiny berth, his gaze distantly staring out into the stars. His white plating gleamed brightly in the darkness of the room, lit only with the faint flare of a burning incense stick that Drift constantly insisted on lighting. His chin rested in the palm of his servo, his optics half-lit, his legs a twisted bundle beneath him in a position Ratchet couldn’t imagine was actually comfortable.

Ratchet paused at the sight. It was normal for him to enter their shared little space to find Drift on the floor, curled up in an equally uncomfortable-looking position, meditating. But this wasn’t that. This was… thinking. The warrior hadn’t even noticed him enter the open doorway. (It just seemed counterintuitive to bother closing it; privacy was an impossible commodity on a shuttle so small. Not, of course, that Ratchet minded being constantly in the same space as Drift.)

He didn’t dare close the door behind him now, lest Drift suddenly shock at his presence and feel trapped. He took a single step closer, making sure his footstep echoed in the room.

Drift started and twisted in Ratchet’s direction. The slight tension that entered his frame relaxed when he saw him.

“Something outside the window that I’m missing?” Ratchet asked. “I’m old, you know; my eyesight must be going.”

Drift’s smile was faint and fleeting, and his verbal response was nonexistent.

So this wasn’t some momentary daydream, then. Ratchet crossed the room slowly and settled on the berth beside Drift, the two of them side-by-side taking up nearly all the width available; the berth was a frightfully small thing, but that didn’t interfere with recharging as much as Ratchet initially feared, not when Drift practically recharged on top of him. He had absolutely no qualms about taking his share of Ratchet’s personal space, and Ratchet found he didn’t mind at all.

Drift’s gaze found its way back to the window. “The trip back,” he murmured, “didn’t take quite as long as I thought it would.”

It did seem short, now that Ratchet thought about their inevitable arrival back into the chaos of the Lost Light. They had spent plenty of time moseying around various star systems, taking the long way around several nebulas, visiting the rare Cybertronian-friendly planet under the guise of exploring (and definitely not acting like tourists). Days seemed to creep by slowly; the passage of time itself seemed inconsequential. There were no schedules, no need to watch his chronometer, no need to worry about being pulled out of a good recharge by an emergency page from the medibay and instead worrying when a stray kick from a recharging Drift would nearly push him out of the berth.

They finally got close enough on the Lost Light’s trail that Ratchet finally bothered to check their estimated arrival time. By now, they had a few standard solar cycles left at their slowest speed, and there were no more stunning sights or tourist traps to distract them. Time enveloped the little shuttle again.

“The ship logs…” Drift began. “The ones in the database. Are they accurate, for when you left?”

“Last I checked,” Ratchet said. “Primus knows what Rodimus has done to the command chain since I left.”

“But before you left… the command structure…”

And then Ratchet understood. “Megatron.”

“Can’t imagine I’ll be a welcome face,” Drift said.

Deadlock was not something Ratchet wanted to talk about. In fact, he had done a relatively wonderful job of pushing all thoughts of Deadlock out of his mind, and now when he looked at Drift he saw the emphatically good (arguably to the point of stupidity) and talented and annoyingly religious swordsmech. Realistically, he knew there was no erasing Deadlock, or what he did under Megatron’s orders. But they were so _different_, Ratchet didn’t see them as a single entity anymore.

Drift didn’t look at him when he spoke. “He put my name on the List.”

“He told the DJD to kill you,” Ratchet realized.

“He told them personally. Made a big speech, apparently.” Drift made a motion with his servo. “I only heard about it on a Cybertronian outpost. One close call with the DJD was all I needed to get myself back in gear after Wing’s death.”

Ratchet had to take a moment to let that sink in. He knew Decepticons rarely let a turncoat go, and he had wondered over the years if there was some sort of internal system that prevented traitors from getting free – or, at least, getting far after they did. Prowl had speculated on the DJD, but most had written that off. Surely the DJD chased bigger prey than the run-of-the-mill turncoat.

But, then, he did once have a conversation with Drift, one late night in the ship behind the command console. It had busted up and started sparking, and Ratchet really wasn’t surprised given how cheap the whole thing was, but Drift simply starting rewiring things like it was second-nature, and Ratchet couldn’t help but ask.

“All the higher-ups spent some time with the DJD,” Drift had explained quietly, while putting wires back in place. “You had to know how to sabotage a ship fast, unless you wanted Tarn venting down your neck.”

“The DJD bothered with sabotaging ships?” Ratchet had asked.

Drift shrugged. “Fast with it, too. They never wanted to waste fuel chasing small prey through the galaxy. Easier to ground them.”

Small prey. He supposed that should have given it away, but that entire conversation had been like walking on cracking glass. Drift never talked about his time as a Decepticon, and Ratchet never wanted to ask. Something cold and hard entered Drift’s voice when he talked about that part of his past – not the quiet embarrassment he had when he spoke of his time in the Dead End, or the soft reverence in his tone when he talked about Crystal City, but something bleak and angry coating his intonations.

“Who else knows?” Ratchet asked. Because, by Primus, if Rodimus exiled Drift for something not his fault and then worked alongside _Megatron_, of all mechs—

“Perceptor, after I joined the Wreckers. I thought I should warn them, in case they ever did find me again while I was with the Wreckers, so they would know to just hand me over to spare themselves.”

“And Rodimus?”

Drift shook his head. “No, I never told him. Perceptor told me to keep it to myself, that it would be best if as few Autobots as possible knew that the Decepticons’ worst killers were looking for me. Said the Autobots didn’t need any more reason to mistrust me.”

“Seems like pissing off the Decepticons enough to get on their hit list would be a pro.”

“Maybe, if the DJD didn’t also kill anyone associated with their target.”

Ratchet couldn’t believe it, but he wanted to go back to the Lost Light. He wasn’t ready to spend the rest of his life traversing the galaxy outside of time and work and duty when that was comparatively all he had known for so much of his life. As much fun as it had been with Drift, he missed the chaos, the adventure, the antithesis to settling down. And, really, he couldn’t imagine Drift would be happy in a cozy little apartment in a decently-sized city, with nothing to whack with his swords and no atheistic soldiers to exasperate.

But…

“We don’t have to go back,” Ratchet murmured.

Drift finally looked up, his optics bright now as he stared at Ratchet. “Not go back to the Lost Light?” he echoed.

Ratchet nodded.

Drift drew in a long vent. “No,” he said. “No. I spent centuries running from Megatron on the opposite side of a battlefield. I think I could meet him again on the same side.”

“He put your name on the DJD’s List.”

“As a Decepticon. We were on opposite sides of the war, and I was one of his best warriors and I left. He’s not a Decepticon anymore. He doesn’t have an army, or the DJD.”

“But he…” Ratchet wasn’t sure how to put it. How could he explain to Drift that he understood if he didn’t want to go back to face his old Decepticon boss? Primus knew what he did to Drift during that time. The Decepticons were hardly the kindest faction to their recruits.

As if he could hear his train of thought, Drift said, “He never hurt me. I think he liked me, actually.”

There was a moment of silence, and finally Drift said, “What? Can’t imagine anybody putting up with me?”

Ratchet didn’t smile. “Megatron wasn’t exactly known for his kindness to his subordinates.”

“Not to Starscream, no. But he did like some of us. Saw potential in us.” Once again, Drift looked away from him. “He picked me out, personally. Named me. Helped train me. He beat a bot to scrap and gave this gallant speech to the soldiers on how we are more than our past functions when one of them called me a buymech. I thought he really cared about me; I would have done anything he asked of me. When I heard he put my name on the List, I was honestly surprised. I knew, logically, he wouldn’t let me walk away. But I had hoped.”

“He was your friend,” Ratchet said understandingly.

Drift shook his head. “No. He was like a sire to me. He was the first mech to actually care about what happened to me.”

Ratchet often wondered during the course of the war, while his servos were covered in the freely-flowing energon of Deadlock’s latest victims, what would have happened if he had told Drift to stay in the clinic, or had offered to walk him to the Functionalist Council. He told himself that that wasn’t his job, Drift hadn’t been his responsibility, he had no reason to care what happened to Drift in the end. Recently, his fuel tank soured at the thought that he could have had so many more vorns with Drift, with this happiness he felt now, if he had let him stay. If he had been the first mech to care, not Megatron, the course of the war would have been far different.

“I don’t _want _him to hate me,” Drift said quietly.

Drift didn’t want anyone to hate him. Whether it was Rodimus or Ratchet or whoever the nearest mech was, he was constantly vying for approval. Perhaps there was something about growing up in a world where the entirety of society had nothing but disdain for you did that to a mech.

“This Megatron, this mech on the ship,” Ratchet said. “He’s not the same as the mech who ruled the Decepticons.” Drift looked up, surprised, and Ratchet quickly added, “He’s still a piece of scrap, as far as I’m concerned, but he’s not _as much_ of an aft as he used to be, now that he’s out of the position of tyrant.”

“Did the Hatchet just almost give a mech a compliment?”

“Shut up, kid, I’m trying to help.”

Drift was smiling now, and it was soft and warm and made something in Ratchet’s spark hurt with how beautiful it was. “I know,” he said.

Ratchet wrapped an arm around Drift’s shoulders, not that it was possible to pull him any closer than he was already sitting. “What happens – with Megatron, or Rodimus, or anyone else,” he said, “you won’t be alone.”

“Trust me, I know.”


End file.
